Please view below the English abstract of a recent article by Virta, Puurtinen and Pihlainen, published at “Historiallinen Aikakauskirja” (3/2016) and titled “Multidisciplinary Approach to Expertise in History”. The full article (in Finnish) is available through the authors.

“Thousands of experts work in the field of history, yet there is no comprehensive view available of what history expertise might be. In this article, we tackle this question of historians’ expertise from the point of view of expertise research, theory of history and history didactics, suggesting that definitions of expertise in history and the development of history higher education can benefit from an approach spanning these different disciplines. Our attention is directed particularly at the specific characteristics of historical thinking and at what it is historians do. It is here that the aspects of history expertise that we feel demand increased attention in higher education are crystallized. We take expert historians to be someone who actively develops themselves in their thinking, actions and capacity to reflect on their profession. Their professional skills include the ability to pose questions central to their field of research, a well-structured knowledge-base, and the source-critical proficiency typical of an academic historian. Expertise in history is a complex issue, and one that necessarily needs to be examined in its specific sociocultural context.”

Organized by the Oulu Centre for Theoretical and Philosophical Studies on History and the research project ‘Reinventing the foundations of the European Legal Culture 1934-1964’. The conference is free and open to the public.

It is often suggested that historiography deals with change in time. If nothing ever changed, it would hardly make sense to do historical research. The nature of conceptual change has been an object of acute interest in recent years in the history and philosophy of science, cognitive science, Begriffsgeschichte, the history of ideas, legal history and other fields. Although a seemingly simple notion, the term ‘conceptual change’ hides a complex set of questions and problems.

First, ‘conceptual change’ may be seen to imply a number of different claims. It could mean a change of a particular concept or a replacement of that concept by another. It could also refer to the emergence of an entirely new concept. On the other hand, the reappearance, circulation and mutable application of alleged ´perennial´ concepts in historical writing would seem to undermine the idea of any abrupt ´change´ in conceptualizing history. Concepts operate within their intellectual context, where issues such as tradition have an impact within conceptual change and permanence. Especially in normative contexts such as law and legal tradition, concepts and their interrelationship take on a formative and constructive character.

Second, one is consequently entitled to ask what ‘change’ is in history. Ultimately it is a question of how historians have understood invariance, change and replacement in their texts. It may appear that invariance is the prerequisite of variance. When we speak about a change of X, something would need to stay unchanged. If there is no invariance whatsoever, the case would appear to be that of a replacement of X, rather than of a change. The problem becomes visible when one tries to understand the emergence of an entirely new concept. Does it presuppose discontinuity with respect to the tradition that precedes it? Or does it rather imply continuity, as Collingwood suggested: “Any process involving an historical change from P1 to P2 leaves an unconverted residues of P1 incapsulated within an historical state of things which superficially is altogether P2” (An Autobiography, 2002, 141)?

Third, how should the concept of concept be understood in the context of historiography? That is, what is the anatomy of this tool of representation? On the one hand, many different philosophical traditions have put forward theories of concept, but often their notions appear unsuitable for describing changes in history. On the other, many schools of history deal with concepts, but they often define them only vaguely or assume implicitly. Thus it is necessary to ask, for example, what the relation of concepts to language is and whether they should be seen as atomistic units or as composable to smaller elements. In addition, contributions from educational science, neurobiology and cultural studies challenge historians to rethink whether concepts should be perceived as mental or social entities. Sociolegal studies have challenged the normative value and permanence of concepts and examined the way that change in political, intellectual and legal contexts is reflected in conceptual change.

We invite contributions on the topic of Conceptual Change in History from both junior and senior scholars and from various fields. The papers may deal with the semantic problems of conceptual change: How should change, stability, replacement and emergence of concepts in history be understood? What kind of theory of concepts does historiography require? Contributions may also address the question of the modelling of conceptual change. What are the mechanisms of conceptual change and how can they be presented? What is the relationship between concepts and normative orders and such as law and legal culture? In addition, papers may describe specific cases of conceptual change in history, which illuminate some philosophical, legal and theoretical aspects of conceptual change.

This international conference is organized by the Oulu Centre for Theoretical and Philosophical Studies of History and the research project ´Reinventing the foundations of the European Legal Culture 1934-1964´. The three-day conference hosts presentations by keynote speakers and additionally invites submission for plenary papers.

Please email submissions to Heta Björklund (foundlaw@gmail.com) by March 31, 2016. The maximum length of abstracts is 300 words.

Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography argues that narrativism has made important contributions to the theory and philosophy of historiography but that it is now time to move beyond it to postnarrativism. Much of the theorizing of historiography has focused on defending either absolutist historical realism or relativist postmodernism. Kuukkanen shows how it is possible to reject the truth-functional evaluation of interpretations and yet accept that historiography can be assessed by rational standards. The postnarrativist view maintains that studies of history are informal arguments for theses about the past and that they are always located somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity.